VisualRoute 7.1

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Maintaining maximum network performance means more than just updating all your machinery with the latest fixes and patches. Networks and Internet connectivity can slow down even if you run a tight ship.

To help with these problems, you can use software that traces your connection from within your infrastructure out through the Internet and reports on the bandwidth as the connection passes each server, switch and router.

VisualRoute 7.1 from Visualware Inc. of Turlock, Calif., maps a network's Internet connection by using basic utilities such as ping, whois and traceroute programs.

VisualRoute doesn't just tell you a lot of information about your own network but reports on activity elsewhere. For example, if you type in www.msn.com, VisualRoute will show you the connection from your PC to St. Louis, where the packet is routed, to San Francisco and finally to Seattle.

In the analysis section, VisualRoute might advise you that the connection to msn.com is working well, but Internet Control Message Protocol packets are being blocked past the network 'Microsoft-Global-Net' at the 11th hop.

That means that, for security purposes, Microsoft isn't permitting those packets to gather any information at that point. In this case, it tells you that the server blocking the transitions is running IIS 5.0. Domain names and IP addresses along the way are also given.

It's easy to see the power this software has'and its easy setup and navigation makes VisualRoute all the more powerful.

Visualware Inc. makes other useful tools, such as eMailTrackerPro, which traces the route of a received e-mail back to the sender and graphs it on a map; VisualLookout, which monitors ports usually not defended by firewalls, such as Port 80, and VisualPulse, which monitors and generates reports on the network devices and systems on your network.